Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

No Strategy. No Clue.

By Alan
Caruba

The
Wednesday, June 10 Wall Street Journal headline at the top of the page was
“Obama Set to Expand Troops in Iraq.”We
were 589 days into the two terms Barack Hussein Obama has served in the office
of President of the United States and he is as clueless now as he was when he
arrived on January 20, 2009.

“President
Barack Obama is poised to send hundreds more American advisers to a new base in
a strategic Iraqi region to help devise a counterattack against marauding
Islamic State militants, U.S. officials said Tuesday, a shift that underscores
American concern over recent battlefield losses.” It’s 450 “trainers.”

We have
had losses because (1) Obama was elected on a promise to end the conflict in
Iraq and (2) reelected by pulling out troops to the point that the remaining
Iraqi troops—Shiites in the south—decided it wasn’t worth dying for their
leaders. Can’t say I blame them, but dying at the hands of ninth century
Islamic fanatics is the fate that threatens the entire Middle East, not just
Iraq or what’s left of it.

This is
how we lost the war in Vietnam. There was a time when Americans utterly
destroyed their enemies on the battlefield. In the latter half of the last
century, starting in Korea, we forgot how to do that and why that’s how wars
are won.

In all
candor, like a lot of Americans, I went back and forth about the Mideast
conflicts. Looking back, I think George H.W. Bush showed remarkable insight
when, after driving Iraq’s Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, he stopped at the
border and came home. George W. had the notion he could somehow introduce
democracy to the region. He couldn’t and it will likely never really occur
there because Islam is the only law and it has kept the region ignorant,
backward, and under the thumb of tyrants for centuries.

The
Islamic State troops must be stopped at some point, but Obama is not the
President who will do it. Whatever U.S. backed combat occurs will be just
enough to present enough television news images to convince the gullible that
progress is being made.

Obama
arrived in office without any strategy and has spent the last six and a half
years “muddling through” as the British say. He and the Democratic Party had
only one goal; to win the elections. After that, they wanted to “fundamentally
transform” the greatest nation on planet Earth. They have largely made a mess
out of everything they touched from ObamaCare to Common Core.

There’s a
reason why Obama will send more troops and that’s because every one of our
allies has told him that, if the U.S. does not again assert its role of global
leadership, they are not going to cooperate with him in a thousand different
ways.

Our allies
in the Mideast have told him they lack the military strength (and will) to
conduct any kind of war with ISIS. The U.S. and much of the rest of the world
cannot afford to sit by and let the enormous oil wealth and reserves of the
Mideast come under the control of ISIS.

So, once
again we read headlines about U.S. troops returning to the Mideast.

What that
means is that the 2016 elections are more critical to the future of the
nation than all previous ones.

I think
Americans, liberals, conservatives and independents alike have had more than
enough of President No Strategy. I think there are enough older Americans who
remember and take pride in a nation that was unabashedly the world’s leader in
the pursuit of peace and democracy. And I think that the thirty percent or so
of brain-dead liberals are not sufficient to affect the outcome of a 2016
election devoted to restoring the nation’s economy and leadership.

It can be
done. John F. Kennedy was on his way to doing so. Reagan did so. In 590 days
from now, we can begin to do so again.

"Looking back, I think George H.W. Bush showed remarkable insight when, after driving Iraq’s Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, he stopped at the border and came home."

Incorrect.

President HW Bush did not "stop at the border and come home". With the United Nations, HW Bush set up comprehensive terms of ceasefire for Iraq, principally UNSCR 687 and UNSCR 688, and committed the US as chief enforcer of those terms of ceasefire. Subsequently, the casus belli for the no-fly zones, Operation Desert Fox in 1998, Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, and the stream of US-Iraqi military confrontations between 1991 and 2003 that culminated in OIF was the Iraqi breaches of the terms of ceasefire that President HW Bush and the UN set up in 1991.

In particular, the humanitarian mandates of UNSCR 688 (1991) and the US-led enforcement of UNSCR 688 set the course to regime change.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.